


None of This is Righteous Anger

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [263]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, Angry Sex, Antagonism, Blow Jobs, Dirty Talk, Feelings Realization, First Kiss, First Time, M/M, Penetrative Sex, Semi-Public Sex, antagonists to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-10 07:28:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18655771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: “Shut up, Sheriff,” Tony says, both his fists in Steve’s shirt now, that tin star poking, his heart a dead pound in his throat. “Unless your next sentence islet me take you to bed, because otherwise, you can go straight to hell.”





	1. Chapter 1

The first time they kiss, it’s in anger. They’ve been shouting at each other for ten minutes and neither one is backing down and there comes a point when Tony’s got Steve by the collar of his dumb workaday shirt and Steve leans in instead of pulling away and then their mouths are working together, furious, words swept away, maybe, but the feeling’s still there, the impassioned sense that the other one is dead wrong and they’re right except they’re both winning now: Tony pinned against the side of the barn, splinters in his back and Steve’s big hand on his hip, the other curled hard around his neck, and Steve--clean-living, no spirits, deacon on Sundays Steve--is kissing the ever-loving shit out of him, making these hot little sounds that drown out the drone of the grasshoppers, the lowing of the cows in the field.

“Ah, god,” Steve says in the warm space between their lips. “Tony, I--”

 _Need to leave_ , Tony hears. _Have to ride back to town and pray and pray and forget that I ever rode out here today._

“Shut up, Sheriff,” Tony says, both his fists in Steve’s shirt now, that tin star poking, his heart a dead pound in his throat. “Unless your next sentence is _let me take you to bed_ , because otherwise, you can go straight to hell.”

Steve groans, a thundercloud on the prairie, and his grip gets greener, meaner. “I could have you in the barn, in the straw. That’s more of where you belong: down in the muck, like an animal. You're a thief and a scoundrel. This isn’t the first time there’s been a complaint about you cheating folks, Stark.”

“Oh, no. No, no, none of this is righteous anger. You’re just mad that you want me. You’re just pissed as hell that kissing me makes you harder than watching the girls at the saloon flash their tits.”

“You’re full of shit.”

“Tell me I’m lying.” Tony runs his fingers through Steve’s hair, blond and too long for this weather, for the scorch of summer that lies ahead. “Nobody’s making you stay here, are they? I’m not holding you against your will. We both know I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”

Steve’s eyes are fierce in their fervor, almost blinding. “Damn right.”

He tips his face up and nuzzles Steve’s mouth, licks a little soft at the seam. “So quit being all hat and no cattle and fuck me in the goddamn straw.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.” Steve kisses him again, like a drunken man drowning, and bites hard and good at his lip. “You want it so bad, Tony, you can have it right here.”

Which is how Tony ends up on his knees before blue sky and new fields and every goddamn passing crow with Steve’s cock in his mouth and his own in his hand and God’s gift to the law making more noise when he spills than a blushing virgin bride and it’s that which puts him over the cliff, that sound and the look on Steve’s face in the sunshine: like he’s seen the Lord himself and all the angels and each one’s given him a good slap; together, they make him spurt all over the lawman’s boots while said lawman’s dick is still sunk to the root and never mind the midday heat on his neck or the swirl of the dirt, fuck, it’s the best one he’s ever stroked out in his life.

“Did you swallow that?” Steve says faintly, his thumb on Tony’s cheek chasing a long line of sweat. “You did, didn’t you? Shit.”

He rides away like that, stunned, like somebody’d set a pistol off near his ear. But not before he hauls Tony to his feet and kisses him gently, all that fire, all that anger, damn near leeched away.

“Stop by the jail next time you’re in town,” Steve says from the saddle, broad-brimmed hat jammed back on his head. “So we can talk properly about Mr. Barton’s complaint. He’s fixin’ to call in a special man from Helena if we can’t settle this satisfactorily.”

“Later this week,” Tony says. “I have business at the bank. If I have time, I’ll come by.” He licks at his lips, the lingering sting of Steve’s seed, and the sheriff's eyes, by design, follow.

“Good,” Steve says. “See that you do. By Friday. Or else I’ll put out a warrant.”

Tony stands in the afternoon heat and watches him pound away, down the little lane to the road and then fly away through the fields, the horse’s hooves flying, Steve’s body bent into the lea of the wind.

He’ll wait until Friday, he thinks, a skip in his step as he turns up towards the house, and then he’ll ride into town and one way or another, without question: he’ll get the sheriff’s hands on him again. And no matter how much fuss Steve might make about it, to himself, to his God, Tony is damn dead certain about one thing: they'll both be counting the days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I told myself I needed a break from the Steve/Bucky angst of the past few days...but somehow stumbled into a different sort of angst here.


	2. Chapter 2

The next time they kiss, it’s through bars. They’ve been watching each surreptitious for well nigh an hour, Steve grinning and Tony grinning and the sheriff’s deputy, Barnes, reading the paper with his chicory coffee and waiting for true night to come and by the time he finally ambles out, gun belt at his waist and body aimed at the saloon, they’re both desperate for it, the ability to touch, and no matter how pissed off he is, Steve wants so damn bad he can’t wait.

The key’s stuck in the lock and Steve’s hand is still on it but Tony’s got him by the belt, hot fingers jammed under old leather, got him yanked flush against the bars and that mouth, the one that Steve’s dreamed about this whole week, is open against his and even awkward like this, a kiss shoved between steel, it does something wicked to his insides, something perfect and unholy and good. Tony’s tongue is a rattlesnake and Steve aches for his poison and it’s so bad, what he wants; bad enough to want another man’s cock and not some nice girl’s hand in marriage, worse not to give a damn if the door’s locked, to remember if he heard Bucky shoot the bolt. Anyone could walk in here. Anyone. The mayor, the man who owns the mill, the woman who keeps the books at the bank--hell, God himself could stroll in carrying a stack of newly-bound Bibles and Steve wouldn’t want to stop, wouldn’t want to let go of the only person who’s made him feel alive out here on the windswept edge of America: a n’er do well and a scoundrel and the smartest man he’s ever met.

He’s rutting against the cage, that’s how bad it is: the cage he'd thrown Tony Stark in. It was an attempt to make Stark see reason, to scare him into paying Barton out so this whole thing could be set aside, finished without a Pinkerton man from Helena coming to town and poking around, sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. People came to Lee’s Crossing to start over, to leave their old lives behind, and generally that made for a well-behaved populace; when everybody had a past they were inclined to pretend hadn’t happened, no one was ever anxious to call in the law. Which told him how blatant Tony’s swindle of Barton must have been if the man had been so quick to run to the sheriff’s door, but then, everybody at church seemed to agree, Barton had always been a strange bird.

But what would everybody think if they saw Steve now, getting pawed by a prisoner, his cock harder than a hammer and his heart a hare tearing through dirt.

“Get in here,” Tony says against his lips, more air than sound. “Goddamn you, Steve. Please.”

He feels the key turn and the lock snickt and then the cell door is open and Tony is in his arms, bucking like a wild horse until Steve catches hold of his wrists, squeezes, and then he stills, Stark, stills and stares at him, those dark eyes barely catching the light.

“You need to pay Barton,” Steve says.

“No.”

He lets his grip tighten. Tony’s mouth trembles, a sight that make Steve feel greedy.

“Yes. It’s gone far enough. Pay back what you owe.”

“I don’t owe him a damn cent. Any loss he thinks he suffered, well, that’s the cost of him being an idiot.”

He folds Tony’s arms behind his back and catches both wrists in one hand, tugs the other back to stroke Tony’s hip, and oh, the look Tony gives him--fury and desire and need--makes him want to fall to his knees.

“You pay him, he won’t bother you again.”

Tony laughs. “Oh, that’s exactly what he’ll do. Once the mine bears gold, why the hell would a man stop digging?”

“I’ll talk to him.” Steve’s eyes are on his fingers, tanned and dusty against the black stretch of Tony’s fancy trousers, the swell he’s not quite ready to touch. “I’ll make sure he understands that once is enough.”

“You will, huh?” Tony leans forward, pulling against the iron of Steve’s grip. “The sheriff as my heavy, is that it?”

The strain in Tony’s arms makes Steve breathless. “I--I don’t want him bothering you anymore.”

A soft snarl. “Since when do you care?”

“Since--since---!”

He wants to say, _since Barton made you my problem_ or _since I kissed you_  or _since you bought me a drink my first night in town and laughed in my face when I turned it down and asked for sarsaparilla instead_. But words don’t come easy with Tony, they never have, and it’s so, so much easier to push on his chest and pull on his hands and get Tony’s ass flat on the old Army cot Bucky rustled up from somewhere and kneel right there before him, the filthiest sort of prayer.

Then it’s easy to touch him, to kiss his sharp, wet mouth and pet at the bulge of his fly, trace the long, fat line of his cock, and the way Tony clings to him, arms locked hard around his neck and body quaking under his hands, makes him angry at himself for not riding back out to Stark’s small, neatly-kept ranch that night, any night since, instead of running to God and staring up at the rough, wooden cross and asking for guidance, forgiveness, a line of some kind of light.

But Tony Stark is nobody’s puppet, not even the Devil’s, and if he’s here, mewing into Steve’s kiss like a kitten while Steve unbuttons his flies, then it’s because Steve wants him to be. God might be testing him, surely, but the weight of Tony in his hand, the tear of wet at the tip, is real and good and beautiful. It’s no trick.

“I’m sorry I didn’t touch you before,” Steve murmurs.

“Me, too.” Tony hiccups and rocks into Steve’s fist. “Oh, fuck. Me, too. God, you’re good at that.”

“I liked the way you touched me. The way you took me in your mouth.”

Tony moans, a banshee that rattles the cot. “You did, huh?”

“Yeah.” He tips his lips against Tony’s cheek. Kisses the edge of his whiskers. “Never had anybody do that for me before. Felt so good.”

“Oh. Oh, god.” Two hands in his hair, tugging. “No wonder you came so fucking hard.”

He turns his head and finds Tony’s mouth, whispers: “May I do it for you?”

Which is how Steve ends up with his face in Tony Stark’s lap as the lamp burns low, taking pleasure in the body of a man before the eyes of God and the Holy Ghost and anyone who might walk through the door. Outside, it’s nine o’clock on a Friday and there are boots on the wooden sidewalk, boots and shouts and the high, happy calls of men too drunk to remember they have to work in the morning: that there are cattle to tend to and crops to mind and only one more day until the Sabbath, until Sunday, when they’ll each walk before God and wash themselves clean of the sins of the week past to make room for the sins of the future and press out of the church doors into the sunshine, hearts light and hands empty, ready for Sunday dinner and an afternoon drink.

It’s more difficult than he’d thought, swallowing Tony’s cock, but Tony guides him, murmuring things and using his hands like pulleys and getting Steve’s mouth his lips his tongue exactly where he wants it and it’s heaven when he figures it out, how to suck and to slide until Tony’s grunting, rough kicks of his hips and the choke of no breath and the high, urgent slur of his words _fuck_ and _Steve_ and _fuck_ and when Tony comes, it’s a shock how good his spunk tastes, how easy it is to drink down, to take in; how ready he is, even before he can breathe, to have Tony like this again.

“C’mere,” he hears Tony say over the cannonball of his heart. “Come up here, you wondrous creature. I need to kiss you.”

Tony licks at Steve’s mouth, eager, chasing the taste of his own release, and it only makes sense to put him on his back, to press him into the creaky spine of the cot and climb over him, guide Tony’s hands to his belt and let himself be cracked open and watch Tony spit in his hand and grab him, jerk him just this side of too hard, and the only thing that Steve knows is how good it feels to have Tony touch him and look at him like that, like he’s something wonderful, and smile like an angel when he makes Steve come.

He empties himself on Tony’s starched shirt and the hems of his coat and has to bite his lip hard at the sight of it, the smell: his mark on Tony’s fancy, city-bought clothes.

They kiss some more, after. Long, lazy kisses, more molasses than an afternoon’s heat.

“Do something for me,” Steve says.

“Mmmmm. Anything.”

“Give Barton his money. We both know you took what was his.”

“Not my fault he wasn’t smart enough to hold on to it.”

“No, I know. But still. It’d make your life a whole lot nicer, wouldn’t it, if you weren’t being harassed by Pinkertons. Or by me.”

Tony sighs, sighs and combs a hand through Steve’s hair. “Maybe I like being harassed by you, sheriff. You ever think of that? Maybe you should harass me more often. Try and shepherd me towards the light.”

He nuzzles Tony’s throat, the heat that’s pooled there, the rough catch of sweat. “I’d rather just kiss you, if that’s all right.”

“Mmm, maybe I want your moral guidance. Maybe I need you to remind me of what’s right and what’s wrong.”

“Maybe,” Steve says as the church bell starts ringing ten, “you need to straighten yourself up and go home.”

A chuckle. “Does this mean I’m free to go, Oh Ye Guardian of the Law?”

“Always.” A touch of lips, a small, dirty kiss. “Always.”

“Come to dinner after church on Sunday,” Tony says at the door. His collar’s askew and his face is flushed. He looks drunk. “Soon as God sets you loose, you come back to me.”

Steve smoothes Tony’s hair, dark curls run amuck. Says softly: “Once I hear the last amen, Tony, I’m yours.”


	3. Chapter 3

The kiss that matters most is tentative, taken behind a closed door miles from anyone, Steve’s bare skin damp under Tony’s hands and Tony’s shirt, his shoes soaked by the storm Steve’s dragged in.

Sunday starts off beautiful, the sun high in a clear azure sky, but by noontime when Tony’s starting to keep an eye towards the drive, the temperature’s stifling and there are big balls of cotton in the west. He checks the larder for the tenth time and takes a mug of Irish coffee to the porch, watches the wind kick up dust in the yard and hear the horses in the barn nickering to each other, nervous; they don’t need to see the sky to know what’s coming. They can feel it.

He makes a pretense of sitting and fails at it terrible; gets back up and paces the porch. The mug gets lighter and lighter until it’s empty and his head is just dulled enough to stifle the fist of panic that’s lodged in his throat. He’s desperate for another drink which means he damn well shouldn’t have one so he settles for a cigar instead.

The wind is fevered now, rattling the fences and the eaves. It’s running from town, the storm is, east to west in a fierce line; he can see the rain in sheets racing up the road, a wave of water drenching everything in its path, including, if he’s kept his damned promise, Steve.

For a moment, he imagines Steve standing outside the church door, the God-fearing men and women of Lee’s Crossing spilling out around him, chattering and blessing each other as they stare nervously up at the sky. Everyone else will have hurried home, saddled horses or skedaddled up the street, but Steve’s not supposed to go home, to that little room he rents above the pharmacy. He’s supposed to come here, as far away from home and Deacon Rogers and the onionskin pages of his Bible as he can get, but will he? God guided Noah through a storm like this one, didn’t he, but Steve and his mare don’t have the luxury of some giant boat.

Maybe this is a sign, Tony thinks, biting hard at his cigar, or that’s how Steve might take it, anyway: a personal deterrence from his Lord and Savior to stay the hell away from Tony Stark.

The first drops of rain hit the dirt. The wind turns to the east and grows cold.

No, Tony tells himself, sucking in sweet tobacco and remembering the look on Steve’s face at the door, the feel of his fingers as they stroked Tony’s hair. Hell or high water, surely. Steve would be there.

The rain kicks up and chases him inside and he sits in a cloud of his own making, brooding, half hard and half anxious and by God, what had Steve done to him? A do-gooder, the man was, somebody who saw the world in black and white--that’s how Tony had always thought of him; a man who set more store by his moral compass than by anything he might feel.

It wasn’t a busy job, was it, being a sheriff in a town full of misfits, people who preferred to keep to themselves. It’s what Tony liked most about Lee’s Crossing, why he’d decided to risk putting down roots: people here were far more interested in their own business than anybody else’s. Some folks might have called it self-centered, but to Tony, it was just common sense. He didn’t give a damn who the bank teller slept with or how the owner of the saloon made her real cash and in return, they never questioned why the son of one of New York’s richest men was living on his own on a ranch in Montana he’d paid for in gold that he’d earned himself by foxing other people out of their money. He played on their greed or their ego, the folks that he swindled; on their belief that it was their God-given right to live high on the hog while the people who cooked for them, cleaned for them, died for them in the War Between the States, languished in the shadows and thanked their Lord with genuine humbleness whenever He saw fit to grant them a meal. They reminded him of his father, the men he’d met in Chicago, St. Louis, even down in Texas: unthinking and arrogant and entitled, and he’d felt good about taking their money, about keeping some for himself and seeding the rest of it to people who actually needed it. Once he’d built a reputation for himself as a scoundrel, a dandy-ish ne’er do well, he was a honeytrap: irresistible to the rich and stupid in search of a thrill but persona non grata enough to make his forays outside of the great houses and well-lit streets invisible to all but a few.

Ten years, he’d moved about, flitting from one city to another, one state to the next, taking with one smooth hand and giving with the other. He’d ached to flee New York for ages, but the hostilities had made that impossible--never mind that his father had bribed the goddamn US Army to stave off conscription and done the same to stop him from enlisting.

“You’re too old,” his father had said irritably, eyes fixed on a bank book. “Too old and too fucking stubborn. You’d desert within a month. Or be court martialed within your first week.”

He was 30 when the war broke out. 30 and unmarried and the only son of an only son, the last of an uncertain line. He drank too much and spent his father’s money and before the ink was dry at Appomattox, he was bolting from the city without any goodbyes, with only his wallet and one valise in hand.

A decade of gallivanting, drifting, swindling, and then, a few years ago, he’d found himself in the middle of a town that was nowhere filled with people who didn’t look at him twice. He’d fallen in love with the great stretches of prairie, the snow that rolled off the mountains, the pleasure of owning and tending his own land. He had plenty of money; there was no reason to keep moving. He set down his stakes and decided to make the little ranch five miles from the town's center his home.

But then Clint Barton had crossed his path, his and a lot of other people’s. Barton had bought the feed store last year, swept in all flashy with a fat wad of cash and decided that meant he owned this town. Oh, he’d never done anything strictly illegal, so far as Tony knew, but he’d made himself a damnable pest. He’d gotten loud with the ladies at the saloon; tried to instruct the farrier on how the man should best shoe his horse; thrown over a table at the tailor’s when his suit hadn’t come out just right. So when word had reached Tony through an old friend in Helena that a shipment of goods meant for Barton might be waylaid for the right price, well, what could he do but finance the diversion and make a neat profit from the less-than-strictly-legal resale of all those bolts of cloth and plow blades and rice?

That Barton would get wind of it was probably inevitable, but that he would involve the sheriff, much less some outside detective? It’d taken Tony surprise.

But it hadn’t turned out so bad, had it? No, it had not.

He rolls a new cigar between his teeth and did not look at the clock. Where in the ever-loving hell was Steve?

Even now, it’s hard for him to believe that the blushing kid who wouldn’t take a whiskey the first time they met is the same one who came all over him, who sucked his cock and begged with those big blue eyes for guidance, who held his wrists and kissed him like a force of nature, a constant, something that could not be argued with. Just thinking about him makes Tony’s gut tighten, sends a rush of blood rivering south, gets the rusty wings of his heart opening, fluttering, and makes him want to say all kinds of damnable things.

For an exhale, two, he’s glad Steve isn’t beside him, isn’t curled up like a great blond cat beside his legs. He might be wont to look down, the mood he’s in now, and give words to something foolish that sound too much like--

There’s a pounding on the door, the startle of a fist. Tony almost falls out of his chair.

Outside, it’s still pouring, but there’s no more thunder or lightning. There’s only Steve standing there, soaked through and shivering, every inch of him touched by the rain.

“Oh, honey,” Tony says, grabbing his hands, ten cold fingers that catch on his own. “Goddamn, sweetheart. Come in."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...one more installment here, I think.


	4. Chapter 4

Tony’s hands are firm and dry and strong and Steve can’t see any reason to resist. Even when they turn up under his lapels and start pulling at his suit coat.

“Get this off,” Tony says. “Christ, look at you. What’d you do, march straight through a river on your way here?”

“Might as well have.” His coat hits the floor with a wet squelch. “Couldn’t see more than a half a horse length ahead for most of the way.”

“I would’ve understood if you’d turned back.”

He cups Tony's face. “I didn’t want to.”

Tony squints up, a hint of something soft and sharp. “I can see that. Stubborn as hell, aren’t you?”

“I know my own mind,” he says.

He’d had a lot of time to think about it; maybe too much. Mile after muddy mile, the unpredictable winds, the steady soak of never-ending rain. But it hadn’t really been a question, had it? He’d made up his mind. In church that morning, listening to Reverend Fury preach from Isaiah, he hadn’t felt the need to for God’s permission or forgiveness. There was a time when what he wanted, what his body did when he thought about Tony’s beneath his, about the way Tony made him feel, like pretty shattered glass--made him feel as though there was something wrong with him, a defect that had snuck into the Lord’s grand design. It had always shadowed him, his attraction to men; he’d never felt what the stories said he should when he held a lovely girl in his arms, when she demurely pressed her bosom to his chest and whispered things about moonlight and stars.

During the war, it had haunted him. All his men spent the long hours between killing writing letters back to their sweethearts: demure women in darragotypes they would show him shyly; fresh daisies no man had ever plucked; childhood friends for whom their feelings, a half breath from the veil of death, were suddenly and perfectly clear. He envied them; oh, how he’d ached, how dark the thoughts were in the night, the sounds of the wounded around him, of standing before his God never having known that kind of love.

No, he hadn’t apologized to God that morning, sitting on a pine bench he and the other deacons had built. He hadn’t looked to the sky and waited for retribution, or heard the Reverend’s reading of the Word-- _Here am I; send me Lord_ \--and wondered if, when he turned up the road out of town and set his mare to a run, he’d be taking something other than the right path. Instead, as he stood for the last hymn and raised his voice to meet the others, he’d closed eyes for a moment and said to his savior: _Thank you._

Standing before Tony Stark, with those clever fingers so quick to take isn’t theirs plucking open the buttons of his shirt, he finds the words again, gives them voice this time:

“Thank you.”

“For what? Letting you drip all over my floor? Here, come on.” The last button gone, his cuffs popped. “Quit standing there like a statue and help me,."

“You strip off all your supper guests like this, Tony?”

Tony laughs. “Only the ones not smart enough to stay out of the rain.”

Together, they peel Steve from his Sunday best, straight down to his skivvies. Then past.

“I should get you a towel,” Tony says as Steve shucks the last layer. “Or maybe five. My god.”

If it were anybody but Tony, Steve would feel like a fool, stripped down to bare skin and a hint of a blush in someone’s front parlor. It were anybody but Tony, he would feel like it was wicked, having another person see him like that; if it were anybody but Tony, though, the dark, greedy plume of those eyes wouldn’t have him stiffening even as he shivers, goosebumps rising high on his skin. And Tony isn’t even touching him.

“Steve,” Tony says in a voice like black coffee, “you’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.”

There’s a pulse of heat in his cock, a jerk; he knows Tony can see it. He swallows. “You don’t have to just look.”

Tony grins up at him, a cat that ate two dozen canaries. “Maybe I want to.”

"Maybe I'd like it better if you kissed me.”

“In a minute.” Tony shifts, steps behind him, his heat now at Steve’s back. "Don't try and rush me, Rogers. There’s a lot of new territory here for me to survey.”

There is water between his thighs, water at the base of his spine, water dripping from the ends of his hair. He’s cold, there barefoot on Tony’s floor. He wonders if he’s ever been this hot in his life.

“You do realize,” Tony says, “that the only part of you I’d seen bare before now is your dick.”

He bites back a whimper. "Yeah.”

A trail of nails down his side, curling in towards his hip. “And don’t get me wrong, you dick is gorgeous.” Tony’s mouth brushes his shoulder. “But I couldn’t help but wonder about the rest of you.”

“And?” The word strung like a wire.

“And.” Tony’s in front of him again, curled flush, his breath close. “My imagination didn’t do you justice.” Those long fingers stretch up to find his neck, stroke. “Not one damn little bit.”

Which is how Steve’s arms fold around Tony’s waist and Tony’s head falls back and they kiss like a flower that’s blooming, one that’s finding the sun after a long summer storm.

~~~

“I’m getting you all wet.”

Tony smiles. Feels a little shudder slide down his back. “You’re getting me something, all right.”

Steve nuzzles his chin, that big stiff beard softened a little by the damp. His hand finds the curve of Tony’s ass. “Tell me.”

“Rather show you.”

“Yeah?”

“God, yes.” He tips his face and takes another kiss. “Let me take you to bed.”

“Please,” Steve breathes, more prayer than speech. “Tony. Please.”

He behaves himself, Steve does; goes down in the sheets when Tony pushes and lays there sloe-eyed while Tony tears out of his damnable clothes. He lets Tony straddle him, lets him work open the vial of sweet-smelling oil and spill some over his fingers, reach back. It’s only when Tony breaches himself, that first tentative push, the one that always hurts the worst, that Steve reaches for him, curls his hands around Tony’s knees and makes a low, greedy sound.

“Don’t,” Tony says through clenched teeth. “I swear, Steve, if you touch me too much, this will be over ugly and fast.”

His cock is fat and angry, bobbing against his stomach and not understanding why it hasn’t been swallowed by Steve’s fist or his mouth--his mouth that’s wide and wet, that felt so good before, when Steve was kneeling on the goddamn jail floor, his blonde head bobbing and a moan trapped in his throat, _shit_ \--

“What are you thinking about?”

Tony squeezes his eyes shut and concentrates on his fingers, on the shove of them, the pinch and the delicious sort of pain. “Nothing.”

“Bullshit.” God, that voice. Deep and filled with pride, with amusement. “Your cock is wet.”

“I’m thinking,” Tony says through clamped teeth, “that if you don’t shut up I’m gonna come without your dick inside me and that would be a goddamn fucking crime.”

“Oh,” Steve says. “You want me to fuck you, is that it?”

His lids go up without his permission and damn if the sheriff isn’t beaming up at him, the dirtiest little smile on his face.

“I knew that’s what you wanted,” Steve says. He tightens his grip on Tony’s knees. “That first day, you’d have let me fuck you in the barn.”

Tony groans. It comes out more like a wheeze. “I asked you to!”

“Hmmm. Would you have looked this pretty, though? You wouldn’t have been naked, would you? You were so hot, you’d barely made it out of your pants.”

“What about you? You’d have spilled before you got it in. Two minutes of my mouth and you came like a kid.”

Steve’s face is alight, brighter than a tree on Christmas. “Maybe,” he says, “but one look at you playing with yourself in the dirt and I’d have been hard again.”

“Shut up,” Tony says again, louder, as much a plea as a fucking demand. “Shut _up_ , Rogers, jesus--!”

Then the world spins and Tony’s on his stomach, face planted in the wet feathers of his pillow, Steve’s mouth following the curve of his back, those big hands clamped hard to his hips, and before he can say a word, breathe, he feels the brush of Steve’s dick, the heat of the head catching the edge of the oil.

“Tony,” Steve says, fierce and soft. It’s a question, the sweetest kind of declaration.

Tony reaches back, comes up on his knees; finds the warm, wet slide of Steve’s thigh, its tremble. “Yes,” he says. “Please. I need it.”

It isn’t gentle, when they fuck. Steve is so heavy, so goddamn big, that it hurts. He bites at Tony’s shoulder and he finds Tony’s hands under the pillow and he winds their fingers together, his grip unrelenting and hard. If it were anyone but Steve, Tony might be unnerved by how much he likes it, that feeling of being trapped, denied the chance to escape. But somehow, being held down and fucked by Steve Rogers makes Tony feel soft inside, safe; he’s a bulwark, Steve is, between Tony and the Bartons of the world, men of casual cruelty, men who hurt just to hurt, just to make themselves feel better. The way Steve is taking him is not that. It’s possessive and filthy and loving, loving?, and God no, he tells himself as Steve pitches up and hauls him back, shoves a hand beneath Tony’s body and gets a hold of his cock. No, don’t say that. Don’t even think it. Fuck, don’t let those words get out.

“I’m gonna come,” Steve murmurs in his ear. “I’m gonna come inside you, Tony, and you’re gonna come for me, aren’t you? Come on, I want to watch you. I want to feel how tight you get when you do.”

“Oh, fuck, sweetheart.”

Steve moans, a faded little sound like leaves falling. “You called me that before. At the door.”

He slips his hand between his legs, past Steve’s grip. Strokes the tight swell of his balls. “Uh huh.”

“I liked that. I like it.” Steve shoves in hard, holds him, stays. Stays. “It makes me feel so good.”

“Yeah?”

A kiss on his neck, a rough pump of his fist. “God, yes. Yes. Say it again.”

“Sweetheart,” Tony whispers as the fire pours down his spine. “Fuck me just like that, sweetheart, Steve. Yes. Yes.”

Then he’s wet, he’s white, there is light everywhere, even behind the black of his eyes. Light and light and Steve pushes him down, gets a raw grip on his thighs. This time, Steve pounds into him with no restraint, like something ancient and wild, the sounds of his pleasure profane music in the cool, evening air, and when he comes, it’s Tony’s name that he cries, not his God’s; Tony’s name that he repeats like a chorus, his big, eager dick twitching, still rutting after his balls empty out.

They lie in scrambled sheets for a long time, after, licking lightly at each other’s skin, hands moving like lazy birds. Tony can’t shake his way clear of a grin.

“There’s supper,” he says finally, when Steve’s face is tucked against his shoulder, the sheriff’s breath coming deep and easy. “You hungry? It’s getting late. Maybe it’s time we get up.”

Steve kisses his neck, a soft sound of contentment. “No,” he says, dry lips in a warm curve. “No. Not just yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dang it! Perhaps there's an epilogue left. But don't hold me to that.


	5. Chapter 5

By the time they rustle out of bed, the sun is low on the horizon, reams of red and gold reaching from behind the mountains to streak across the sodden land. Tony crawls into his trousers and heads out to feed the animals and Steve follows, scooping his wet clothes from the floor and carrying the whole mess outside. He stands at the line that hangs near the kitchen door,  his bare feet sinking into the scrubby grass, the mud, his body bared to the evening air, shaking out his good suit and his best shirt and pinning them up for the wind to blow good and dry.

“Well,” he says to himself, chest filled with the cream of contentment, “can’t ride home like this, can I, naked as a jaybird. Guess I got no choice but to stay.”

He looks out over the land, the small cluster of buildings and fences that mark the heart of Tony’s property. It’s wild land, no doubt about it, the frontier barely held back; he’d wondered before why a man like Stark, one who seemed to thrive so much on the company of others, didn’t live in the heart of town. If the rumors were right, he could’ve bought up most of the place and still had half a fortune to see him through the lean years. Heck, the first night that Steve had met him, he’d bought drinks for the whole saloon with a grin and a casual flick of his wrist--but he’d stayed on the stool next to the new sheriff instead of making the rounds, rolling his eyes at Steve’s teetotalling while sipping at what the bartender’s smirk told Steve were high-dollar spirits, rose bushes blooming bright on his cheeks.

“You know who that is, right?” Bucky had said to him as they made their way back to the jail, the tiny desk and shaky chair that served as the whole sheriff’s office.

“Who?”

“That guy who was yammering at you all night.”

“He said his name was Stark.”

“Mmm. That’s his name. It doesn’t mean anything to you?”

Steve squinted over in the darkness, the easy hush of the street. “No. Should it?”

“I heard his name a lot in Texas,” Bucky said. “Around Houston, mostly. He used to be a hell of a shark. Real good at cards, even better at talking rich folks out of their money.”

“Is that was he does here? Swindle?”

Bucky chuckled and shuffled up the step from the sidewalk, reached for the door. “Nobody knows what he does out here, boss. He lives by himself, oh, five clicks or so to the west. Long as I’ve been here, never seen him near a card table, not once.”

Steve followed him in and made for the oil lamp, fumbled for a match. “So he’s not a crook? Is that what you’re saying?”

A sigh, the creak of a buckle. The gentle thud of Bucky’s gun belt on the desk. “I’m saying he’s the kind of man that everybody knows and nobody does. That’s what I don’t like. The not knowing.”

There’d been rumors over the years, little stories here and there of a funny land deal up near the Idaho territories; of Stark being seen outside a house in Helena for women of ill-repute; of money moving in and out of the man’s account like whitewater; of trouble out east in Bismarck while Tony had been down there visiting. Nothing solid, nothing so much like a crime, but it was enough to get Steve’s attention, to ensure that Stark, when he was in town, was never far from the sheriff’s eye.

“Rogers,” Tony had said to him once, idling over to his table near the end of the bar, “if I were a different sort of man, your constant presence might give me ideas.”

Steve’d felt his ears redden. “Don’t flatter yourself. I’m not here for you.”

Tony had raised an eyebrow, a dark, elegant arch. “Really? Then you must be waiting for one of the girls. Who’s your favorite?”

“My favorite--?”

“One of the redheads, I’ll bet. I can see you liking the exotic types. Am I right?”

The words had come out louder than he’d meant them to. “I’m not here to partake in any female company, Stark!”

Tony had eyed him, a slow, dirty blink that stopped Steve’s blood in its tracks. “Aren’t you, then?” Stark said.  “Tsk. Too damn bad. You’d make a pretty picture with one of them in your lap.”

They’d crossed swords every time they’d met after that: Tony mocking and Steve trying to stay righteous and all of it building into a bundle of frustration and a deep-rooted anger that Steve couldn’t quite understand, didn’t want to--especially when it manifested itself in unsettled dreams that he crawled out of sticky, his hand on his cock and his mind in a daze and the first light of the morning worming through his window shade.

It was only when Tony had pushed him, demanded, when he’d driven Steve to the brink and opened his mouth and let him take that first, furious kiss that any of it had made any damned sense. And now here he was, less than a week later, standing naked on the man’s land as the sun went down on one chapter of his life and the moon stretched her silver arms to mark the start of another.

He’s so lost in his thoughts, on the kiss of the evening’s sweet breeze, that he didn’t hear Tony slip up behind him, that he jumped a little when cool hands palmed the lines of his ribs.

“Hi,” Tony says.

Steve leans back, reaches up to lace his fingers through Tony’s. “Hey.”

“You fixing to become part of the scenery, hmm? Not that I’m objecting. You’d make a damned pretty tree.”

“I didn’t realize how beautiful it was out here. Guess I let my mind wander.”

“Your mind can wander plenty, but I’d prefer if the rest of you didn’t.” Tony kisses the base of his shoulder, his undershirt a nice scratch against the stretch of Steve’s back. “I like having you here.”

The light is all shadows now, shadows lined in slivers of silver, and Steve can feel himself stiffening, his cock filling as Tony touches him out here in front of the sky and the land and God, those slim fingers brushing his nipples, his hips moving gently against the meat of Steve’s ass.

“Especially,” Tony says, “because you’re in a frankly criminal state of undress.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.” A quick, hard pinch, perfect. “It’s giving me all kinds of ideas.”

Which is how they end up in the kitchen, the door flung wide open, breathing the smell of the rain and the night, Steve’s muddy feet on the floor and Tony in his lap, panting, riding Steve’s cock, slow, slow, slow, revelling in every inch. Their bodies are folded in moonlight, strung together like vines, and Steve can’t take his eyes off Tony’s face.

He’s already come once, Tony has; head back and hands desperate as Steve lapped at the head and licked at his balls until Tony begged and then Steve had let him slide in tight and deep until he’d cried out, shaky, a torn ribbon caught by the wind and poured himself down the well of Steve’s throat but he’s hard again, Tony is, with Steve tucked him inside him, hard and slick with sweat and making these soft, gorgeous sounds, moving in boneless time with Steve’s hips, and Lord help him, Steve never wants this to end.

“Steve.” The word breaking, beautiful.

“Baby.”

Tony whimpers and he clamps down, his body the sweetest sort of vise. “Steve. Steve. Please.”

And then what can he do but tuck his beard against Tony’s neck and palm the plush swell of Tony’s ass and come like he’s dying, a hard punch of rapture that makes him lose everything except the feel of Tony’s skin, the soothing press of his hands, the low, murmured words that Steve can’t quite hear over the roar of his heart.

Their mouths move together, sleepy, Steve’s hands sliding up the plains of Tony’s back, Tony arching like a long, wiry cat, and they don’t have to talk anymore, do they?  No. Not tonight. Not tonight.

 

~~~

 

“I’m gonna pay Barton back,” Tony says in the morning, keeping his eyes on the eggs in the pan. “I’m not going to personally hand him a check or anything, but I’ll see he gets his money back.”

Steve’s arms wind around his waist and squeeze none too gently. “Good. That’s real good.”

“Yeah, well, you say that, but I have a feeling this is as much about making me eat crow in public as it is about Barton getting whole. My uncharacteristic if anonymous generosity might not persuade him to settle down.”

He feels Steve’s breath on his cheek, sweet bitter from tooth powder and coffee. “I’m sure I can contribute something to the effort if need be.”

“You don’t need to--”

“Do not,” the sheriff says in a voice like a cell slamming shut. “Do not finish that sentence, Stark.”

“Ok,” Tony says with a grin. “Ok ok ok. How about, if I need your help, I’ll ask?”

Steve hums, lets it catch as a kiss on Tony’s cheek. “Better. Much better.”

He rides off before the sun is proper up, his horse dancing eagerly at the promise of a run. His suit looks like hell. The damn thing’s not even really dry; when Tony kisses him, one last kiss before Steve hops in the saddle, his shirt comes away wet.

“You need some new clothes,” Tony says. It isn’t easy; his throat’s tight.

“Do I? Why?” Steve reaches down and brushes Tony’s hair from his forehead. Smiles. “You’ll just tear them off me anyway.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. You’ll tear them off for me.”

Steve’s eyes are twin sparks. Tony sees his grip go tight on the reigns. “If it gets your hands on me faster,” Steve says, sandpaper, “then you’re damn right I will. Every stitch.”

He rides off without a promise of tomorrow, without another day set when they’ll next meet because they don’t need one. It’s inevitable. As sure as the fall of the moon in the west.

“I love him, don't I?” Tony says to himself, to the sheriff’s back, to the pound of his horse’s hooves through the earth. “God help me. I do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I think this is actually the end? But if the muse strikes again, I won't resist. I've had so much fun writing these two. Thanks to all of you for letting me know you've enjoyed it, too.


End file.
